


You and Me Could Be Like Royalty

by thefairfleming



Category: The White Princess (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Spite Date, it's a thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 15:56:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10880112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefairfleming/pseuds/thefairfleming
Summary: Henry and Lizzie end up on an accidental Spite Date, I play fast and loose with anything resembling "context."





	You and Me Could Be Like Royalty

She doesn’t see him until she’s already sitting down at the bar, the drink menu in one hand. Or rather, she didn’t see it was  _ him. _ Some part of her brain registered  _ hot guy sitting alone at the hotel bar _ , so yes, she’d deliberately chosen the seat next to him, but that was before she realized the guy was Henry Tudor, and then it was too late to move without making a thing of it.

He looks up from his drink, his expression stormy, and Lizzie steels herself as she flips open the menu of overpriced cocktails and bottles of wine. No by the glass options here because her cousin chose a truly posh place for her wedding, and Lizzie sighs, wondering how she’s going to get through the next three days.

“There are other seats,” Henry finally says, and Lizzie looks over at him, eyebrows raised.

“Do you own this bar?” she asks. “I realize you’re eager to put your name on everything from Cardiff to London, but I had no idea that entrepreneurial spirit reached as far as hotel bars in Yorkshire.”

She says the last slightly breathlessly, eyes wide, and Henry’s mouth thins, his glare darkening. 

“I’m just saying there’s no need for us to spend time together outside this bloody wedding,” he replies, and Lizzie thwacks the menu down on the bar. 

“You move, then. I like this seat.”

He leans back on his chair, watching her as he lifts his drink (an Old Fashioned, of course, god, he’s so  _ predictable _ ), swirling the amber liquid slightly. His eyes are very blue, and she is  _ deeply _ irritated that she thought he was hot from a distance. He’s not even wearing a tie, and his shirt is hopelessly wrinkled. He also needs to shave, and maybe get a haircut, and he absolutely, definitely needs to stop watching her like that.

“I was here first.”

Lizzie snorts, a decidedly unladylike sound, but like she gives a flying fuck what this man thinks of her. “An admirable defense were we in nursery school, but doesn’t hold much water here in the bar.”

The corner of his mouth lifts, like he’s going to smile, but of course dour Henry Tudor wouldn’t do something as likable as smile. Instead, he settles back into his seat, signaling for another drink.

Fine. He’s not going to move, neither is she. They can sit here alone at the bar in sullen silence, drowning their mutual sorrows.

“Gin and tonic,” she tells the bartender as he brings Henry his cocktail, and Henry waves a careless hand at the man.

“Put it on my tab.”

Lizzie’s head jerks around at that. 

Presumptuous git.

“In that case,” she says, leaning forward on the bar and offering the bartender both her best smile  _ and _ a decent look at the low neckline of her dress, “I’ll take the 2005 Chateau d’Yquem.”

She can actually feel Henry grimace, but he doesn’t say anything, and when the bartender goes off to fetch the expensive bottle of wine she’s asked for, Lizzie turns her dazzling smile on Henry.

“You’re flush these days,” she says. “You can afford it.”

Henry does smile then, but it’s a sardonic flash of teeth rather than a genuine grin. “Drinking an entire bottle of wine in a hotel bar by yourself  _ is _ rather in line with the sort of judgement one expects from your family,” he tells her, then lifts his glass in a sarcastic salute. “Well done.”

A small bit of Lizzie’s triumph drains away, but she’s not giving up that easily.

When he sets his glass back on the bar, she leans over and snatches the cherry out of it, biting into the overly sweet fruit with an equally saccharine smile.

Then she frowns as the burn of the alcohol hits her tongue. “Ugh, is this their well whiskey?” she asks, and when Henry looks slightly abashed, she rolls her eyes, signalling the bartender back over and thrusting Henry’s drink at him.

“Make this again with the top shelf stuff this time, thank you.”

The bartender skitters off again to do her bidding, and Henry watches her with another one of those expressions she can’t quite work out. “People just do what you tell them to, don’t they?” he asks, and Lizzie shrugs.

“You clearly don’t.”

“And you hate me, so I suppose there’s not much to recommend the practice of disobeying you,” he mutters, and Lizzie finds she has no idea how to respond to that.

Does she hate him? He’s certainly taken everything that should belong to her family, and the fact that everyone seems to expect them to fall on each other’s faces and make life easier for everyone irks her to no end.

So yes, she hates him.

Very much. So much that she won’t even get up from this seat next to him at the bar, so much that she’ll make him pay for her drinks, and make sure his drink is the best it can be.

The bartender returns then, bearing both Henry’s improved Old Fashioned and her pricey wine, complete with a bucket of ice and a glass, but Lizzie is so unsettled that she just takes it all from him, gathering the ice bucket in one arm, the glass in her free hand, purse dangling from her elbow.

“Enjoy your drink,” she tells Henry. “I’ll see you at the wedding tomorrow.”

He’s smiling now, but it’s a real smile, and it makes something in her stomach flutter in a way that is surely disgust.

“Save me a dance at the reception,” he says, and Lizzie gives him her sweetest smile before saying, “I’d rather dance with a literal pig, but I’ll keep that in mind.”

The bartender is now looking back and forth between them clearly confused, but Henry is still looking at Lizzie, and she’s still looking back.

Henry only breaks their eye contact to take a sip of his drink, and there’s that grimace again.

“Fuck me, that’s good,” he says, and Lizzie finds herself smiling as she swans out of the bar. 


End file.
